Jury Hears Camarena Interrogation Tape : Court: The Spanish-language recording conveys the desperation of the kidnaped and slain DEA agent. A 10-foot-high translation was beamed onto the courtroom wall.

A federal court jury in Los Angeles spent 64 minutes Friday listening to the taped interrogation of a desperate, dying U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was trying to alternately placate and deceive narcotics traffickers and corrupt Mexican police officials who were torturing him at a house in Guadalajara.

As the recording of agent Enrique Camarena and his interrogators was played in Spanish, jurors read a 10-foot-high English translation that was beamed onto a wall of the courtroom.

Camarena’s plea, “Don’t hurt my family!” was emblazoned for several seconds across the wall of the packed courtroom, as were the words “Don’t hit me anymore,” “Ouch!” and “Eeeow!” At one point, Camarena asked his interrogators: “Couldn’t I ask you to have my ribs bandaged, please?” He was frequently heard groaning, particularly in the latter phases of the interrogation.

The tapes contain several voices in addition to Camarena’s. DEA officials have identified two of his interrogators as drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero and Mexican intelligence official Sergio Espino Verdin, both of whom are now imprisoned in Mexico after being convicted there for involvement in Camarena’s 1985 kidnaping, torture and murder.

At several points in the tape, Camarena refers to his interrogator as “ commandante, “ presumably a reference to Espino, who was a commander with Mexico’s Federal Security Directorate.

None of the men on trial in Los Angeles are mentioned in the tapes, nor is there any allegation that their voices are on them. But defense attorneys nonetheless tried for several days to prevent the tapes from being played, contending that they would prejudice the jury. U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie, however, ruled Thursday that prosecutors had a right to play them.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Manuel Medrano had argued that the actual tapes were the “best evidence” of Camarena’s interrogation and accused the defense of attempting to keep relevant evidence away from the jury.

On Friday morning, defense lawyers lost a last-ditch bid to keep the tapes from being played when a federal appeals court panel in Pasadena denied their motion to overrule Rafeedie.

Nonetheless, Rafeedie cautioned the jury just before the tapes were played that they constituted only one piece of evidence in the complex case and warned jurors not to be swayed by any emotional reaction that they might have to the tapes.

At a break during the playing of the tapes Friday afternoon, defense lawyer Mary Kelly told reporters that the prosecution was playing the tapes simply “to get the prejudicial impact of the grunts and groans.”

But prosecutor Medrano countered: “We have to prove torture. This shows torture.”

Camarena was tortured for two days at a Guadalajara house owned by Caro. One of the interrogators methodically asked him questions about what he knew about Caro and other drug traffickers.

The man asked Camarena detailed questions on what the DEA knew about the homes and businesses of Caro and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, another drug kingpin. The interrogator also asked questions about two men who were informants for the DEA.

Camarena grudgingly yielded some information, including some about one of Caro’s airplanes, but told his inquisitors that he had little information that they were interested in and added that during the previous year he had not been very active and was looking forward to his transfer out of Guadalajara in less than three weeks time.

Camarena, in fact, had been granted a transfer to San Diego after several years work in Guadalajara, but right up to the point of his kidnaping he had been investigating drug traffickers and their ties to Mexican police officials.